AC/DC play Falluja: Washington’s Weapon of Oz Distraction
WORLDWATCH
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By Tomi Ervamaa in Helsinki
First comes the bell, tolling mournfully. Then a meandering riff redolent with fuzz and feedback, absurdly, idiotically simple and all the more brilliant for it. After feeling about for some seconds, the riff is joined by a pounding rhythm line, and within a few moments here come the vocals - reminiscent of a donkey being rudely slaughtered.
“I'm a rolling thunder, pouring rain / I'm comin' on like a hurricane / My lightning's flashing across the sky / You're only young but you're gonna die…”
“Hells Bells”, sings Brian Johnson, though “singing” is perhaps stretching the word to extremes. This sounds like a castrato banshee on steroids.
Australian rock band AC/DC's Hells Bells (and sic, the lack of an apostrophe is correct) is without doubt one of the finest achievements of Western culture.
And now it is also a potent weapon. The American troops surrounding Falluja, west of Baghdad, have moved into psy-war mode: they have placed loudspeakers on the top of a tank-turret and have been playing high-volume rock through the night to the insurgents in the mainly Sunni city. The works of AC/DC have figured very strongly on the playlist.
Between numbers, Iraqis working for the U.S. forces yell insults across to the insurgents: “You shoot like a flea-bitten goat!” “Come on out from behind your women's skirts and fight like men!” "I hope you've got enough gas in your ambulances to go pick up all your corpses from the gutters!”
The cat-calls refer to the fact that the Iraqi insurgents in the sealed-off city have shot at American soldiers from among crowds of women and children, and that bodies left out in the sun swell and start to stink, attracting stray dogs in search of a ready meal.
And now Hells Bells has been added to the mix, with a lyrical core that can be summed up by the following quatrain:
“I won't take no prisoners, won't spare no lives / Nobody's puttin' up a fight / I got my bell, I'm gonna take you to hell / I'm gonna get you, Satan get you.”
It just might be enough to tip the balance.
The musical approach of AC/DC - Zen masters of noise pollution - does not correspond to the demands of refinement and melodic beauty that Arab aesthetics place on composition.
International musical currents are familiar to the Iraqis, too, but mainly only to the elite. It may well be that the rank and file locals of Falluja, for instance, have not hitherto been introduced to the work of Messrs. Johnson, Young and Young.
If I were a citizen of Falluja and I were to hear Hells Bells for the first time, I think I might take fright and wonder what sort of Mongol hordes had come to town.
If rock is a weapon, then the Americans have an arsenal and a half.
Practically every soldier in arms has a portable CD-player or .mp3 player along. CDs are flown into the country on transport planes, and .mp3s are downloaded off the Net.
When you can carry a small piece of home around with you in the player, it helps to create that bubble of reality that the occupying forces have built in Iraq to counter the threat of the drab and dangerous streets. The army bases are the strongholds of Shania Twain, The Simpsons, and Fox News.
The consumption of music at the front has also taken on some disturbing overtones. Back in January, while I was in Baghdad, I spotted an American soldier who was listening to Pet Shop Boys until his helmet shook with it.
I mean, how can an army even imagine winning a war if its fighting men listen to Pet Shop Boys?
AC/DC, on the other hand, deliver up a realistic soundtrack to the war.
Hells Bells is the opening track on the band's 1980 release Back in Black. This work was clearly ahead of its time, as it functions admirably as a thematic whole interpreting the conflict in Iraq.
Shoot to Thrill is the pressing message of the second track on the album.
“I'm gonna take you down / Down down down / So don't you fool around / I'm gonna pull it pull it / Pull the trigger.”
You Shook Me All Night Long, the seventh track declares, as if describing the nightly battles in the alleyways of Falluja.
Is it possible that the occupation could have gone differently if the Americans had really tried to buy the Iraqis' affections with jobs and money, as they should have done? What Do You Do For Money, Honey asks the third track. Giving the Dog a Bone is the subject of the very next song, though the ammunition mentioned in the lyrics is perhaps not standard army issue.
Finally, Back in Black's fifth number neatly crystallises George W. Bush's tough-love policy, which is intended to bring democracy and harmony to the Middle East, even by force: “Don't you struggle, don't you fight…”, just Let Me Put My Love Into You.
Helsingin Sanomat, first published in print 24.4.2004
TOMI ERVAMAA / Helsingin Sanomat
tomi.ervamaa@hs.fi
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| 27.4.2004 - THIS WEEK |
 AC/DC play Falluja: Washington’s Weapon of Oz Distraction |
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